House approves bill targeting mail vote fraud

Updated 9:45 pm, Friday, April 26, 2013

AUSTIN — Republicans in the Texas House on Friday muscled through a proposal they argue will help crack down on mail-in ballot fraud, stoking the latest round of partisan divide on the issue of voting rights.

Tensions flared on the House floor this week as Democrats unsuccessfully tried to battle back a Republican measure to criminalize “ballot harvesting” of mail-in votes, a process in which a group or an individual collects and mails completed ballots for other people.

The proposal — House Bill 148 by Rep. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale — takes aim at the practice of harvesting by capping at 10 the number of ballots in any election that an individual can mail. Republicans argue the bill is needed to disinfect a mail-in voter system they say is rampant with fraud — in large part because of crooked vote harvesters who get paid to go door-to-door collecting ballots.

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“Some of those folks, if they suspect you are not voting the way they want you to, they just simply don't put your ballot in the mailbox,” Burkett said. “I just want to make sure nobody is disenfranchised.”

But that's what worries Democrats. The elderly and disabled often seek out a friendly neighbor or some assistance to mail in their ballots. And under Burkett's proposal, Democrats fear those who normally would collect and mail ballots for the elderly and disabled will be spooked.

A day after an hours-long debate in the House, the chamber passed the bill 93-48, almost entirely along party lines. Two Democrats — Reps. Richard Raymond from Laredo and Joe Pickett from El Paso — voted for the bill.

The tone rekindled tensions in the House over voting rights that hit a crescendo in sessions past when the Legislature was considering voter ID measures. Though decidedly less toxic, HB 148 stoked fears among Democrats that the GOP was using another voter fraud argument to potentially limit who casts a ballot.

“When you start rejecting offers of let's work together on this to make it better, then I have to be convinced this is not related to curing mail-in ballot fraud in Texas,” said state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where a similar proposal died last session.